This blog raises issues related to disability inclusion and exclusion of disabled people from society because of accessibility or inaccessibility of the environment

Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Universal Periodic Review and Disability– an Indian experience

Introductions

The Universal
Periodic Review (UPR) is a new and unique mechanism of the United
Nations, which was created in March 2006. Currently, no other universal mechanism of this
kind exists. The UPR is an
automatic process of peer reviews the human rights practices of all 192 UN
member states in the world, once every four years. The UPR is a significant innovation as it is is based on
equal treatment for all countries.

The UPR is a State-driven
process under the Human Rights Council that provides the opportunity for each
State to declare what actions they have taken to improve the human rights
situations in their countries and to fulfill their human rights
obligations. There are three reports that are prepared and made available
on the website of Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR)
for each State before the their UPR session namely:

1.The report prepared and submitted by the State

2.The Stakeholders report – a compilation of several
reports received by the OHCHR from various national NGO’s and the NHRC

3.A UN report - compiled by the OHCHR based on information contained in the
reports of treaty bodies, special procedures, and other relevant official UN
documents.

My Experience of engaging in the process

My experience of the UPR
began when I attended a meeting organized by the Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR)
who were in the process of compiling a stakeholder report and therefore were
consulting with different stakeholders. It was my first experience of working
with a group that represented stakeholders from varying human rights
organisations such as women, children, LGBT, Dalits and many others.

My biggest realization
from attending this consultation was that everybody was talking about their
issues and in spite of disability being such a cross cutting issue it is alien
for everybody. This is to say the women’s organisations are not talking of
disabled women, children’s organisations are not talking about disabled
children and so on. Therefore we need to be there to represent our issues
ourselves. Members of the National Disability Network (NDN) were present in all
WGHR consultations yet their final report included nothing on disabled. I
believe it was so because it was the first time for all of us and with regular
interaction I am sure things would change.

Following this were the
regional and national consultations orgaised by the National Human Rights
Commission (NHRC) for the preparation of their report. Here again no body
understood disability issues and in spite of participation of disabled persons
and DPO’s in all consultations their report had negligible mention of
disability issues.

The National Disability
Network was keen to make a strong presentation on disability and therefore
decided to draft our own stakeholders report. With inputs from over 20 national
DPO’s the NDN prepared a report focusing on disability issues. It was with
great delight that we noticed an inclusion of one recommendation from the NDN
report. Though only one recommendation was taken into the main stakeholders
report but it represented the recognition of a disability organizations network
for the first time.

With the support of the International Disability Alliance, I got an opportunity to
meet with persons working on human rights and disability issues as a representative of NDN. I met with five
missions in Geneva namely – Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Maldives and Canada. It
was in these meeting that I gained clarity of the process and how it works. I
also realized that the three reports though important yet had limited function
and the actual advocacy began a month before the actual UPR session was to
happen. How it works is that the missions in Geneva and elsewhere sends
recommendations to their home office, who finalizes them based on diplomatic
relations with States being reviewed and the thrust areas of the country preparing recommendation. These
recommendations need not always be dependent on the three reports.

India is going to have
its second UPR in the 13th session in May 2012. The country will be
reviewed on how it has progressed on recommendations made during the first
cycle additionally there will be an opportunity for other States to make new
recommendations. Each country’s UPR session is for three hours, which is
podcasted live. Every State will have not more than a minute to make their
points and therefore the recommendations they make have to be very crisp.

During
my meetings, I did get a confirmation from the Austrian and the Maldives
missions that they would make recommendations related to disability to India at
the upcoming UPR. This would be an achievement from the last UPR where India
had zero recommendations pertaining to disability. There is further opportunity
for getting more recommendations by meeting various missions in Delhi and
presenting our issues to them.

Main leanings from my participating
in the UPR process

1.UPR is a big and the
only one of its kind international advocacy opportunity for the disability
sector to highlight our issues and make them heard by our government especially
in a scenario where the UNCRPD Treaty body would review India several years
after our State report is submitted owing to their work backlog. Further the UPR recommendations on disability will be fed into the CRPD treaty body report.

2.Regular and constant
networking with other human rights organisations is crucial for us to ensure
integration of our issues and getting more support and partners to have our
concerns heard.

3.Our preparation for the
UPR has to begin well in advance by sending in the stakeholders report before
the submission deadline and then advocating with various missions at least two
weeks before the actual session.

4.We need to provide
specific, crisp and concrete recommendations to the missions that are as cross
cutting as possible. Related background material on the recommendations would
make acceptance of our recommendation easier and better.

5.Different missions must
be provided with different recommendations, as it would be an opportunity lost
if all States make the same recommendation to country being reviewed.

6.Most importantly it is
a process that gives us an opportunity to unite and review our specific matters
together. It requires us to recognise each other’s issues and work on them
collectively as an individuals voice has no place in the process.

3 comments:

Thank you for explaining in detail, Shivani. I think that we go international, we need to put aside the differences that we have within the country. The point of preparatory meetings cannot be stressed enough. And yes, the inter-linkages - if you are a women's group, why is disability NOT your issue? And vice-versa. Of course, everyone needs to focus, but to what level? I think the slogan of "inclusion" has to be translated by everyone into action. We are working in silos while we are and work with human beings whose lives cut across each and every one of those silos.

Hi Shivani, I was looking for the same kind of stuff before years. Now I get it. Shivani our organization also wants to join you in this mission.please inform us when you make the reports we will sand you the surveys reports to you about the issues. you can mail us on koshish4specialpeople@yahoo.in or call me on 8826265950

Thank you Gurmeet. The UPR report on India was submitted in 2011. India was examined in 2012. Our next UPR I think will be in 2016. I am sharing the link of the UPR report submitted by disability coalition ww.dpi.org/documents/UPR%20India.docx I shall surely keep you informed when the next report in being made. Also I am sharing the link of the UPR process with you. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/UPRMain.aspx

About Me

Author of 'No Looking Back' I am the founder of AccessAbility. I became disabled at the age of 22 in a car accident. Life changed completely after I became disabled and today I am happily able to say that it was a good change for me. I love traveling, seeing new cultures and meeting new people. I also enjoy writing and expressing my views on issues mostly relating to disability. started my career in a hotel as a hotel management graduate but after my accident I retraining in Architecture technology with a specialization in Inclusive Environments.
www.AccessAbility.co.in